Dear Great Plains
Mezzanine Gallery
November 1, 2024–May 17, 2025
Dear Great Plains is a postcard-writing campaign created by Great Plains Student Storyteller in Residence Karla Hernandez Torrijos. The project hopes to tell a different story of the Great Plains: more complex, more diverse, and more nuanced. A collective letter, the project raises questions of heritage, history, and home. Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Knowing that you love the earth changes you [...] but when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” Karla asked letter writers to consider their bond with the Great Plains and spent time collecting them from various communities and online.
Karla Hernandez Torrijos (she/her) is a poet and workshop facilitator who has been invited to read in venues across Nebraska, including The Bay, El Museo Latino, and The UNL Wick Alumni Center. The recipient of the 2022-2023 Irby F. Wood Prize for Poetry and the 2020-2021 Vreeland Award for Poetry, her writing interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. Karla was the 2021-2022 Creative in Community Resident for The LUX Center for the Arts and was the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence for The Center for Great Plains Studies.
'Clothing hangs stuck in razor wire atop the United States-Mexico border fence on the beach on September 28, 2019, in Tijuana, Mexico' (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images).
The Journey: Documented Items/Undocumented Souls
First-Floor Galleries
March 7–August 23, 2025
The Great Plains Art Museum is collaborating with the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Tactile Images, a subsidiary of 3DPhotoWorks LLC, to bring a transformative tactile exhibition entitled The Journey: Documented Items/Undocumented Souls to our community. This partnership marks a significant milestone in enhancing accessibility, empowerment, and inclusivity for individuals with diverse abilities in Nebraska.
The Journey presents a photographic essay chronicling the immigrant journey from South America to the United States through a deeply moving and impactful series of images by Getty Images Senior Special Correspondent John Moore. Moore captures the story through items that have been lost or discarded—and later documented—along the way. He also talks about his experiences and these photographs as part of the audio included in the tactile displays.
Tactile Images is dedicated to breaking down barriers for blind and disabled individuals in a predominantly sighted world. Through innovative tactile printing techniques, the company provides transformative experiences for the visually impaired, offering tactile exploration of visual and graphic materials accompanied by braille text, audio narratives, and scents. With a focus on accessibility, empowerment, and inclusivity, Tactile Images is committed to making knowledge and experiences accessible to all.
This exhibition was developed by TactileImages.com in association with the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Getty Images, the National Federation of the Blind, and the Alliance for Inclusive Design and Experiences (AIDE).
